


Tree of Life

by AndreaLyn



Category: The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 11:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/pseuds/AndreaLyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One unexpected effect of Yggdrasil is the fact that it's turned Anders into a five-year-old -- an incredibly adorable five-year-old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tree of Life

_“Ty. Hi. It’s Dawn, calling. I’m not calling because I want to talk to you personally about any personal matters or personal, well…anything. It’s something to do with Anders. I know it’s late, but it’s sort of important. I may have…lost…your brother? Anyway, please call. It’s Dawn. I don’t know if I mentioned.”_  
  
*  
  
“How do you lose Anders?” Axl wonders after Ty wakes him up, forcing them to Anders' apartment with Mike in tow. “Don’t you just follow the line of pissed-off girls?” he sleepily wonders, still clutching a hand to his head like a portable pillow. “Why are we doing this in the middle of the night?”  
  
“Because our brother just got back from Norway and he’s suddenly lost,” Mike says. “Given that our mother sent him on some secret mission, I don’t want to know  _why_  he’s suddenly gone.”  
  
“I doubt he became a tree. You can’t get laid that way,” Ty says snidely, parking outside of Anders’ flat. “It’s two AM. It’s two AM and I’m sitting outside Anders’ apartment…” Mike already knows why, though. After all, it’s not hard to understand that when Dawn summons him, he will go.   
  
Mike taps on the driver’s seat. “C’mon, then. Let’s see what we’re in for.”  
  
Dawn waits for them outside of Anders’ door, her shoulders hunched forward and arms crossed over her torso. She steadfastly avoids looking at Ty, gesturing behind her. “He came back from Norway and kicked me out of his bed,” she explains, trailing after Mike as he unlocks the door. “I came back to get a few of my things before I went back to my apartment and Anders was gone and…”  
  
“Hi!” says the small child sitting in the middle of the sheets, picking his way through a box of sex toys. “I got bored,” he says. “And all these toys were here!”  
  
“Not toys,” Axl manages in a slow deadpan, unable to move. Ty leans forward and yanks them away while all the colour drains from Mike’s face. “Um. Mike?”  
  
“Dawn, I think it’s just a misunderstanding,” Mike says, his eyes on the boy on the bed. “We’ll take it from here. I’ll give Anders a good reaming for making you panic like this.”  
  
“Who’s the…”   
  
Mike sees her to the door with a smile on his face; one that only vanishes when she’s gone. “Axl, call Olaf,” he commands, shooting a wary look back towards the bedroom. He leans forward to press his forehead against his palm, debating how bad this night can get. He hears Ty behind him, clearing his throat. “You don’t remember, do you? You were young at the time, but I thought maybe you’d remember.”  
  
“Remember what?” Ty prompts.  
  
Mike pushes himself away from the door and plasters his enthusiastic smile on his face – the one he’d always practiced when he and Val kept trying and trying for kids. He makes a quick stop in the kitchen, digging out an apple and bringing it into the bedroom. The child sits in a large pajama shirt, toying with the hem now that the box of sex toys had been pried away.  
  
“Andy,” Mike says, raising a brow playfully. “Catch,” he says, tossing the apple in his direction.  
  
Easily, the boy reaches up and catches the apple with both hands, burying his nose into it like it’s a lost treasure. Mike looks back to Ty to see if he’s catching on. He sees the moment the epiphany strikes when Ty sags back in mild horror.   
  
“He can’t be.”  
  
“Trust me. I remember this age all too well,” Mike scoffs. “It’s not like you helped. The two of you were thick as thieves.”  
  
“Sorry, what’s going on?” Axl pokes his head back into the bedroom, mobile in hand. “Olaf’s on his way. Said something about a large stick?”  
  
“Great. Helpful as ever, grandpa,” Mike mutters under his breath. “Andy,” he says, crouching over with hands on his thighs. “I know this is going to sound very strange, but I’m Mikkel.”  
  
“No, you aren’t,” the boy recites, staring up at him dubiously. His blue eyes shone wide and hopeful, as if the mere mention of his older brother caused such a thing. Those were easier times, all right. “Mike’s not that  _old_ ,” he taunts. He peers at the other two. “Who’re you?”  
  
“I’m Ty.”  
  
“And I’m no one you’d know,” Axl realizes. “Fuck! This is weird!”  
  
“You swore,” Anders accuses, peering up at Axl past his floppy blond curls and pointing at him. “Can I swear?” he asks Mike hopefully. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he sings out, until Mike clasps a palm over his mouth. He glares at the boy and there must be something familiar because he looks suitably chastised. Mike keeps his palm there and takes in the sight of his younger brother. He looks every inch as he did when he was five years old, down to the unreal blue eyes and that mop of curly hair that made him look like a cherub. Five had also been the age that Anders started to figure out that with the right words and the right look, he could get anything he wanted.  
  
Bragi right from the fucking start.  
  
“What’s the emergency?” Olaf’s voice came from the front hall.  
  
“Olaf!” Anders shouts enthusiastically, barreling down the hallway in nothing but the oversized shirt, jumping straight into Olaf’s arms.  
  
Thankfully, Olaf actually  _catches_. “Not too stoned yet?” Mike comments under his breath.  
  
“Possibly too stoned,” Olaf replies, staring down at Anders. “Why is Anders suddenly a child? I knew I shouldn’t have taken that LSD,” he says, holding Anders out at arm’s length to inspect him while the boy wriggled and giggled in his arms. “Tiny Anders,” he says, blinking rapidly.”Why are you so tiny?”  
  
“I’m not,” Anders argues, sticking his tongue out at Olaf. “Olaf,” he whines. “You’re hurting my arms. Put me down?” he pleads, a hint of a whisper to his voice.  
  
“I forgot he’s always been like this,” Ty says, still stunned.  
  
“Can we start talking about why Anders is so young?” Axl asks, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “And namely, if we’re going to suffer the same fate?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Olaf says, cradling Anders in his arms like one would a puppy. He even goes so far as to pat him, earning a bright grin of delight. “I had a vision. It seems that your mother had sent Anders to fetch a very important artifact. What they didn’t realize was that the tree of life has some wicked powers when it comes to a god’s genetic structure.”  
  
“Tree of life?” Ty asks.  
  
“Yggdrasil.”  
  
“Are you saying a tree took nearly three decades of life off Anders?” Mike asks dubiously.  
  
Olaf tilts his head to one side and then the other, studying the small child in his arms. “It waited until he got back to Auckland for its powers to take effect. That means something.” He grins when Anders tickles his side, not noticing that the other three Johnson brothers are staring at him expectantly. “What?”  
  
“What does it mean?” Axl asks.   
  
“How should I know?”  
  
“Because you’re the family oracle!” Ty shouts.   
  
Anders makes a whimpering noise and burrows into Olaf’s chest. “Don’t scare the little bugger,” Olaf chastises in a whisper. He goes back to petting Anders like he’s a puppy, but given the tiny sounds of delight he keeps giving off, there must be something soothing about it. “As far as I know, maybe being around you triggered the reaction. We should get the tree and see if we can reverse the effects.” He grins down at Anders and receives a bright grin in turn.  
  
Mike exhales and looks towards Olaf. “I hate to ask…”  
  
“I love these questions,” Ty mutters under his breath.   
  
“Does he…still, you know, have his powers?”  
  
“Do you know a mortal you’d be willing to try it out on?” Axl points out.   
  
At once, three heads turn towards Ty. He knows exactly what they want and it’s not even close to being fair. “We shouldn’t involve her in this,” he protests. “What happens if Anders says something and we have to start explaining our whole fucked up world to her!”  
  
“Swear!” Anders cries out.   
  
“Shut up,” Ty snaps. “No. We’re not using Dawn.”  
  
“What about Zeb?” Axl suggests.  
  
Mike inhales and debates the pros and cons of letting his suddenly five-year-old brother talk Zeb around in godly circles and figures that it’ll probably go horribly, but among their horrible list of choices, it’s probably the best thing they can do. He catches Axl’s gaze and nods his head, unable to take his eyes off of Anders. Somewhere along the way, Mike grew up too quickly and had never paid attention to his younger brothers. To this day, he still doesn’t know when Anders started losing his innocence, but seeing him as he is now pains him.  
  
“Where’s the tree?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest to hide his tension.  
  
“Anders said something about being held up,” Ty says. “He swore at me for twenty minutes straight about the Kiwi fruit police taking the tree of life’s limb? Something about them taking what’s rightfully ours? He went on for a while about something that sounded an awful lot like a stick,” he says, staring at the tiny-Anders-child like they’re completely different people. “There were a lot of slurs in there I’m still trying to forget.”   
  
“Okay,” Mike says with a nod. “Ty? Can you get the stick?”  
  
“Yggdrasil,” Olaf corrects.  
  
“It’s a stick,” Mike says, reaching out with both arms for Anders. It’s easy to fall back into old patterns. Axl was barely bigger than this when their mother left and had refused to walk anywhere on his own. Anders settles comfortably against Mike’s hip, resting his cheek against Mike’s shoulder in this quiet and needy way that he doesn’t remember Anders ever showing. “Axl, get Zeb over here. Olaf, get Ingrid?”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because you’ve taken LSD and I’d like a sober oracle, right now!”  
  
“I'm not sure how sober Ingrid will be, being as she was the one who brought the LSD,” Olaf admits. "Slightly used," he whispers, like it's actually a secret.  
  
Mike rolls his eyes and looks to Anders. “See what you grow up into? No wonder you’re so screwed up,” he says, tapping Anders’ nose and earning a delighted giggle. “Olaf. Can you manage to find something for Anders to wear? Is that too much to ask?”  
  
“That, I can do,” Olaf promises with a wink and he’s out the door.  
  
Mike bounces Anders up slightly higher on his hip. “Am I really screwed up?” Anders asks, picking at Mike’s collar. “Is it because I did something wrong?” he asks, screwing up his nose while his lower lip wobbles precariously. “Did I make you mad?”  
  
“Shit,” Mike exhales, practically folding in half. Anders doesn’t even need Bragi’s poetry right now because he’s got those eyes and those lips of his and looks like he might cry if you poke him. “No, Andy, you didn’t make me mad,” he promises, ruffling his hair. “We all got older and we changed. Some of it’s good and some of it’s bad, but we’re family. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to remember that and sometimes you make it _very hard_  to remember,” he says, settling on the bed and adjusting the shirt so it covers down to Anders’ knees. “Sometimes, I miss when you were this small. It was simpler.”  
  
Anders wraps his arms around Mike’s neck and holds on tight.   
  
Mike can’t get him proper clothes or find Zeb to test out his god-powers and he isn’t rushing out to find the stick that made this happen. All he’s got is the ability to hug Anders so tight that he can pretend there’s still time to protect him from all the terrible things out there. He ruffles Anders’ hair and gives him a fond smile.   
  
“Tell you what. If you’re good,” Mike says, “you can get a piggy-back ride with Axl.”  
  
“Who’s Axl?”  
  
“He’s your baby brother. The six-foot-giant one,” Mike says, aware that everything that comes out of his mouth sounds weird ever since he turned twenty-one. He reclines alongside Anders and passes the time by telling him stories of his life – tamed down, obviously – and can’t help his grin every time something really makes Anders laugh.   
  
Eventually, Axl returns with Zeb in tow.  
  
“I heard there was a tiny god-dude in town,” Zeb greets, waving enthusiastically. “You are seriously cute. I bet we could pick up  _loads_  of chicks with him!”  
  
“Zeb,” Axl sighs patiently. “Shut up.”  
  
“Remember what I told you,” Mike instructs Anders, grinning as Anders screws up his tiny features in concentration. “I want you to ask Zeb what we talked about, but you have to really, really want it. You need to make him want to do it more than anything in the whole wide world.”  
  
Anders wriggles until he’s on his knees facing down Zeb with a wicked smirk on his lips.  
  
“Always been this way, huh,” Axl says to the ceiling, scrubbing a hand through his hair.  
  
“Looking like that? Anders always got anything he wanted,” Mike agrees ruefully, smiling gratefully when Olaf wanders in with clothes that Mike wants absolutely no knowledge of where they came from. “Okay, Zeb. Ready?”  
  
“I want a pony.”  
  
“Anders,” Mike says sharply. “What we talked about?”  
  
“Fine,” Anders huffs. “Zeb,” he says, staring right up at him. “I want you to give Axl a big, big kiss on the lips like you really like him. I want you to make my baby brother feel very happy and you can slurp on his tongue like the people I saw at the park…”  
  
Mike clasps a hand over Anders’ mouth, but watches Zeb carefully.   
  
“Nope,” Zeb says. “Thank god, because I do not want to do slurpy things to your tongue, my lord Odin. No offense.”  
  
“Yeah, none taken Zeb,” Axl promises, taking the clothes from Olaf and helping to get Anders into the small set of jeans and the tiny royal blue shirt. “Please tell me we’re going to take a million pictures while we wait for Ty?”  
  
“It is seriously a shame he’s such a horrible example of a person when he’s normal,” Zeb points out. “Because that is some serious wow-power. If he ever had kids, they’d be adorable!”  
  
“It’s Anders. I’m sure there’s some out there,” Mike says wryly, brushing back a small piece of Anders’ hair that won’t behave. “Seriously, why couldn’t you have stayed this small and innocent? It would’ve saved me a lot of stress.” Anders sleepily peers up at Mike and shrugs haplessly, which Mike understands all-too-well. Not understanding things fully is a Johnson family tradition.  
  
“I’ve got it!” Ty calls from the door. “Watch out! I’ve got it!”  
  
He’s wearing thick gloves as he carries what looks to be a large stick into the bedroom.  
  
“That’s the tree of life,” Mike deadpans. “It’s a stick.”  
  
“It’s Yggdrasil,” Zeb says with wonder in his voice. “That’s what did this? That’s mad cool,” he says. “Do you think I can touch it? Maybe I could be sixteen again!”  
  
“No!” a chorus sounds, including Anders’ small voice – he just looks happy to be included. He beams up at Mike like he’s expecting a treat and Mike’s not validating this kind of behaviour, he’s absolutely not. Still, he can’t help but ruffle Anders’ hair, well-aware that indulging him with his actions is exactly what got Anders to where he is today.  
  
Mike gestures for the stick, taking care to keep out of the way.  
  
“Wait,” Axl says. “What if he gets, you know…smaller? Or, you know, stops existing?”  
  
“Olaf, is that something we should be worried about?” asks Mike.  
  
“It’s possible. It’s also possible that it will fix everything. It’s also possible that it will fix nothing.”  
  
Ty gapes at Olaf. “Sometimes, it’s amazing how you can be so high and yet still be a functioning person.”  
  
“Thanks!” Olaf replies cheerfully.  
  
Anders stares at the stick, reaching out to wrap his arms around it. He’s been slowly getting tired over the last hour and Mike grasps the blanket to tuck the both of them into bed, hoping to hell and high water that this does something. He ushers the others out of the bedroom, on his way out himself when Anders lets out a quiet cry.  
  
“Don’t?”  
  
Mike turns, sighing. “Don’t what?”  
  
“Please don’t leave,” Anders begs, little more than a whimper. “I don’t want to be alone.”  
  
“No, you never do,” Mike agrees, but nods to the others. He takes care of the lights and closes the bedroom door behind him, lying on his back behind Anders. He stares at the darkened ceiling and tries to remember any of the bedtime tales he told Axl after their mother had left. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”  
  
“Even if I wake up and I’m not-so-nice again?”  
  
“Even then,” Mike promises. “You go about it in severely fucked up ways, but deep down, there’s some shred of caring in you. Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t make a mess of it after Mum left.”  
  
“Don’t think so,” Anders mumbles, burrowing into Mike’s side. “You were a better Mum than Mum. Better Dad than Dad, too. They always fought, but you were the one who helped me tie my shoes and taught me how I should read. I tell everyone you’re the best brother in the world!” Anders says with deep pride.  
  
“Wish I’d stayed that way,” Mike says, running his fingers through Anders’ hair. “Shh, go to sleep. You’ve had a rough night.”  
  
Anders throws both arms around Mike’s waist and holds on possessively tight. “G’night, Mikey,” he whispers.  
  
“Night, Andy.”  
  
*  
  
“What the fuck am I doing naked in bed with a fucking stick!”   
  
Mike is awakened by the joyful howlings of his suddenly-adult-again brother. He peeks one eye open to find that Anders is, indeed, naked as the day he was born, and is shoving Yggdrasil to the floor like it’s not so precious anymore. He groans and lies back, reminding himself that not eight hours ago, Anders was cute and pliable and kind. He’s also still the same boy, deep down.  
  
“Anders,” Mike groans. “Shut the fuck up?”  
  
“You’re one to talk! What the fuck happened!”  
  
Mike sighs and takes in his brother, debates the repercussions of what he’s about to do, and decides to send caution to the wind. He reaches over and hauls Anders into his arms, hugging him aggressively tight and ignoring all of the protests and the squirming. “You may be a complete douchebag and an arsehole of the highest caliber, but you’re still my brother and I love you. Now, for once in your life, can you just say  _thank you_?”  
  
Anders opens his mouth and Mike’s already anticipating the next flurry of profanities.  
  
Instead, Anders gets out a quiet, “Thanks.”  
  
“Was that so hard?”  
  
“Incredibly,” Anders growls. “Which one of you has the blackmail pictures? I won’t rest until they’re destroyed!"  
  
“Ty!” Mike shouts. “Anders is back to normal! He’s coming for the pictures!”  
  
It’s Axl who reacts first, judging by the disgraceful heap of a body landing on the floor, the ‘oh shit’ that follows, and the front door opening followed by the sound of feet pounding the ground as they run. Mike laughs as he collapses back on the bed, watching Anders struggle into a pair of jeans in an attempt to catch up to his younger brother, swearing emphatically as he goes.  
  
“All normal?” Olaf asks when he passes the bedroom doorway.   
  
Mike barely sits up. He gives an ‘okay’ signal with his fingers and shakes his head. “Normal as we ever get, grandpa. Normal as that.”


End file.
